


countless are the stars

by bitterins



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Holding Hands, Light Angst, Lots of stars, Mild Language, Non-Linear Narrative, Stars, chuulip...good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 08:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18116846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterins/pseuds/bitterins
Summary: When Jungeun meets Jiwoo and befriends her purely for the sake of combating loneliness, she doesn't expect much in the way of actual friendship. She certainly doesn't expect to fall in love with the girl and her starry eyes.





	countless are the stars

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to the loona gc mahoots aka clyg aka a bunch of enablers!! stan loona

“Look, Jungeun.” Jiwoo tugs on her arm, and having snagged her attention, points to the sky. All Jungeun sees are stars, scattered across a deep blue sky. It still escapes her how the ancients saw animals and objects upon observing them, how they connected dots with lines that wouldn’t help her imagine the shapes even if she could see them now. The only one that isn’t abstract beyond belief is the Big Dipper, possibly Orion on a clearer night. Jiwoo’s pointing at neither.

“I don’t see anything,” she says.

“It’s you,” Jiwoo insists, waving her hand. “Aquarius.”

“You what now?” It has to be something about astrology or astronomy or another word with an astro- prefix, but that doesn’t mean Jungeun actually knows what it is. 

Jiwoo turns, hands to her mouth in a gasp. “You don’t know your sign?” Her voice is a loud whisper, appalled. If Jungeun could see her face properly, her eyes would be wide.

Jungeun shrugs, shoving her hands into the pockets of her basketball shorts. Her cheeks are burning and they have no right to be. “I know what it is,” she says. “I don’t know what it means.” If it means anything at all. None of it is concrete enough for her; she can’t touch the stars, can’t hold them in her hands and trail her fingertips over their surfaces. She doesn’t usually bother with much involving the heavens.

Jiwoo clicks her tongue, pulling on Jungeun’s hand, and before Jungeun can react, their fingers are entwined, slotted between each other. Jiwoo has a tight grip when she wants, and Jungeun doesn’t try pulling away. 

“That’s your sign right there,” Jiwoo says, pointing at an array of stars that—how surprising—looks like absolutely nothing. Noting Jungeun’s silence, she adds, “The waterbearer.”

“That looks like fuck-all. They’re farty balls of fire, Jiwoo.”

Jiwoo giggles. “You have no imagination. Anyway,” she continues, pointing with her index finger and Jungeun’s fist, “That’s an air sign. That’s why you’re so logical all the time.”

Her hand is warm. Jungeun hopes her own won’t get sweaty. Even if it did, though, Jiwoo wouldn’t let go. “Why is it an air sign if it’s the waterbearer?”

“I dunno,” Jiwoo answers brightly. “I’m an air sign too, by the way. That’s the secret to our relationship.” 

“Then why aren’t _you_ logical?”

“It’s boring.” Jiwoo tilts her head back, loose hair seeming to spill down, and stares at the stars. With their hands still together, she points out more constellations, telling their stories and meanings, acting out each of the parts. She laughs when Jungeun says astrology is probably bullshit anyway.

“It’s just for fun. And the stars are pretty—Jungeun, have you ever thought about how many stars are in the universe?” She spreads the fingers on her free hand, motioning toward the expanse of the sky, a grand gesture for a grand sight. Her voice carries inflections that tell Jungeun to humor her.

Jungeun says she hasn’t. She can’t help smiling when Jiwoo spouts off more facts excitedly, when she runs her thumb along Jungeun’s knuckles. 

The number of stars in the universe is large, yes. Jungeun still thinks it’s less than the stars in Jiwoo’s eyes.

 

They meet in some grade that isn’t significant; it might be first or third, possibly fourth. What is significant is that it’s an entirely new class and Jungeun is terrified—though she’d die before admitting it—of being alone. 

The room isn’t all that large, really, but it’s big enough that kids split up into little cliques and group along the edges. Jungeun doesn’t know any of them, so she stands off-center, closer to a corner but not close enough to be either accepted or rejected. An empty feeling settles in her chest, under her ribcage, and she hates it enough that when a girl in pigtails announces, “You look lonely, so I’m gonna be your friend,” she doesn’t attempt to shake her off. 

“I’m Chuu,” the girl says, offering a hand to shake. 

Jungeun looks at her. Short, round. Her pigtails reach mid-back, quite a bit longer than Jungeun’s shoulder-length braid. Jungeun figures one friend is better than none, so she takes the girl’s hand. “I’m Jungeun,” she says, and after a pause, “Chuu isn’t a name.”

“Oh, I have another name! I just like Chuu more,” Chuu says. She has what Jungeun’s father would call “a mean handshake,” very firm and excited. 

“What’s your other name?” Her chest still feels empty, but Chuu is a worthwhile distraction. Jungeun doesn’t know what to think, so she isn’t thinking at all.

“Jiwoo! See, if you say it fast, it sounds like ‘chee-oo.’” She demonstrates this a few times. “‘Chuu’!”

Some kids are strange. Jiwoo is very much so. “Okay.” She tries to wiggle out of the handshake, but Jiwoo has a steely grip and doesn’t seem interested in letting go.

“Mmhm!” Jiwoo nods up and down repeatedly, and Jungeun feels herself get woozy. “Jungeun, can we be best friends?”

“Sure.” She’s still not thinking when she says it, or maybe she’s thinking she’ll be rid of Jiwoo as soon as she musters enough guts to make more suitable acquaintances. 

Jiwoo throws herself at Jungeun. There not much force behind the action, but Jiwoo is heavy, and Jungeun wonders if this is how villains feel before they’re choked to death. Jiwoo’s hug is ten times worse than her handshake. “A new best friend!” she chirps like the birds that always wake Jungeun up in the morning. “Jungeun!”

Jungeun has no idea what she’s getting into. Her chest is lighter, though.

 

“Yo, can I get some of that?” Technically, Jungeun is asking for a taste of the chocolate soft-serve in Jiwoo’s half-eaten waffle cone, but she doesn’t mean it like a question. 

Jiwoo crouches on the asphalt, trying to keep the melted cream from dripping onto her nice shirt. She looks up and rolls her eyes playfully, but that doesn’t stop a grin from showing itself on her rosy face. She burns in this weather. It’s one of the reasons they have to content themselves to activities in the shadows cast by trees and fences and houses. The other is that it’s just too hot and too humid.

Jungeun licks her lips and resists the urge to lean herself against the old, wooden fence they’re using for shade. It has peeling paint and slivers of wood that stick out, and she eyes both warily. She's not interested in dislodging wood from her skin and clothing. 

She sighs, fanning herself as she blows air beneath the neckline of her shirt. The shade is tepid at best, suffocating at worst. The temperature of the shade doesn’t seem too much cooler, till you step into direct sunlight. Jungeun wonders if this is how vampires would feel were they real. Her entire body feels sticky with sweat, more than the syrupy slushie she’d spilled on her legs earlier. It’s gone now, leaving Jungeun with sticky legs and a case of something that might end up being heatstroke, and Jiwoo won’t even share the ice cream. “Jiwoo, for fuck’s sake,” she says.

“No, it’s mine,” Jiwoo says, pouting somehow even as she laps at it—at this point it seems like she should just drink it like a lukewarm shot. She already has stains on her shorts and hands and her hat, even though Jungeun has no idea how you can get soft-serve stains on a hat of all things.

Jungeun slouches against the fence, splinters be damned, and whines. “It’s melted anyway, just give it to me, just a bit.”

Something about the summer makes Jiwoo impossibly bright, more playful. If she goes into the sunlight she’ll be blinding. “No,” she says. She holds Jungeun’s gaze, then quickly shoves the last of it in her mouth. She slaps her sticky hands together while Jungeun shakes her head.

“Jerk.” Jungeun squints across the sidewalk, even though she can’t see much through all the heat waves. She pulls herself off the fence with minimal trouble and no splinters, which is a stroke of luck. 

Jiwoo laughs. Jungeun looks back, and she’s puckering her lips, making a dumb sound that represents a kiss. “There’s still some here,” she teases.

Jungeun glances away, frowning. It’s already too warm. She doesn’t want to faint from the heat. “Yeah, I’ll pass.”

“Whatever you say.” Jiwoo giggles, bubbly, soft. She nudges Jungeun’s calf with her elbow. Funny how she’s the one who burns easy when Jungeun’s the one who’s on fire now, lit right on the patch of skin her elbow touched. “Jungeun, wanna go back to my place?”

A random thought brands itself into her mind. Stars are made of gas and fire. Intellectually Jungeun knows this, but she feels it, too. She feels it between her ribs, knitted into her lungs when she takes a deep breath. 

She looks Jiwoo square in the eyes and says, “Super Smash Brawl, first one to the house gets Meta Knight, race you there.” With that, she takes off, laughing, only looking back to wink at Jiwoo wheezing behind her, clutching her hat so it won’t blow away.

“Damn you!” Jiwoo yells at the top of her lungs, between breaths and giggle fits.

“Love you too!” Star fire isn’t such a bad thing, Jungeun decides. 

 

People grow on you. You get used to them, or they get used to you. Jungeun thinks it might be a bit of both. Jiwoo’s recently learned how to use her library voice, and she’s funny and sweet when she’s not talking Jungeun’s ear off, so she’s not terrible. Jungeun isn’t easy, though. It takes more than a few good jokes and bright grins to get to her heart.

Jungeun heads straight to the gym after school. Even though it reeks of sweat and old shoes and basketball rubber, it’s the best place Jungeun can get when it comes to dancing. It has decent acoustics, and the floor is smooth enough for her to slide easily, but not slip. She puts some instrumental music on at full volume while she stretches, closing her eyes and letting the sounds echo in her head. 

She thinks of moves, of the lines her body should make when the warm-up music finally ends, of the story she wants to convey. The story is different every time. Last time it was about the period of time between sunset to sunrise, the time before that it was a fleeting thought of the ocean in summer. She doesn’t plan it. The thoughts flow as freely as the actions do, wandering and never resting in one position too long.

Now, when her warm-up music switches to a gentle beat, lighthearted and cheerful, she finds herself thinking of a first love, though she’s never experienced one. Dancing, how she defines it, is showing through your body what you have in your heart, and Jungeun has plenty of thoughts and ideals when it comes to a subject like love. They control her arms and legs and her body, till it doesn’t even feel like she’s moving so much as she’s being moved. 

This is the part about dancing she loves so much. In freeform, she can lose herself, just for a moment. The smells aren’t there, nor are the squeaks of her sneakers on the floor. It’s just her, the music, and this little story she wants to tell herself. She thinks it’s beautiful in some vague, unexplainable way. 

The song ends and she delicately lifts her arms to the ceiling, except in her story it’d be to the heavens above, to the stars. She didn’t realize how hard she was breathing till now. She gulps a breath and bows to an imaginary crowd, like her dance teacher always advised. 

“Jungeun, that was beautiful,” a hushed voice says, and Jungeun whips around, blood rushing to her ears. Jiwoo. Jiwoo saw all that.

Jiwoo’s eyes are wide and sparkly, and a smile is on her face. She claps rapidly, like a seal. “That was so pretty.”

Jungeun mouths her name and mutters a thank you. A spark of panic settles in her stomach. She’s never told anyone at school about this, not because it’s a secret, but because it’s hers. She doesn’t want to share this with classmates and teachers, because then, in some way, it wouldn’t belong to her anymore. She can’t explain it even to herself, so how can she say it to Jiwoo? “Don’t—” she starts with no foreseeable ending in her mind.

“I won’t tell,” Jiwoo promises, taking a seat on the wooden bleachers. She tilts her head. “It’s like, it’s _yours_ , right?”

Jungeun pauses, staring at the girl in front of her. Jiwoo looks at her with hands on her knees as she sits up straighter, eyes bright. Jiwoo understands. Jiwoo gets it. “Yeah.” Now that the silence is broken, relief washes over her, replacing that small flame of panic.

Her music is still going, now switched to an opera song that she’s not familiar with, and she moves to turn it off, but Jiwoo lights up and that catches Jungeun’s eye. It’s like her spot is the brightest section of the gym, even though there’s barely any light in the entire building. “I know this one!” she says with a smile, and begins singing along, rolling the round, operatic syllables on her tongue.

Her voice. Jungeun didn’t know she had a voice like that. It gives Jungeun chills even though it’s warm enough to set her face aflame. Jiwoo’s got a voice like sugar, like liquid gold. Jungeun is not a particularly poetic person, but something in the way Jiwoo sings convinces her that this is what heaven sounds like.

When the song cuts off, just like that, Jiwoo stops singing, still swaying to the beat. Jungeun finally turns off the music, heart pounding twice the speed of Jiwoo’s swaying. 

“You never said you could sing,” she says. 

“You never said you could dance,” Jiwoo replies. Does she ever stop smiling? The longer Jungeun knows her, the more the answer becomes a hard “No.” Jiwoo shrugs lightly. “I guess we both have a few secrets, huh?” She stands up and brushes off her skirt, a gesture that would look snooty on anyone else. Her voice sounds a bit teasing to Jungeun.

“Maybe,” Jungeun says back, only slightly teasing. She doesn’t like being wrong. 

“How did I sound?” Jiwoo asks, arms stretched to her side as she walks the length of the bleachers like a tightrope, before hopping down.

Jungeun shrugs, and she’s blushing. Her face is dumb for heating up like this in front of Jiwoo. “Pretty good,” she says, because she can’t think of anything else. She wishes she was better at words, better at compliments, but Jiwoo seems to glow at the praise anyway.

“Thank you!” 

Jungeun nods. She starts her cooldown exercises to hide her face, bending over in a hamstring stretch. Silence. She likes silence. Jungeun succumbs to curiosity for a instant and looks up at Jiwoo.

Jiwoo purses her lips, seemingly in thought. “And Jungeun,” she asks, “do you think you could teach me how to dance?” 

Jungeun stifles a gasp.

At the end of the day, it turns out the way to her heart is a lot easier than she thought.

 

When Jiwoo doesn’t show up at the lockers so they can walk home together, something is wrong. Jiwoo always gets on her for showing up five minutes late, but it’s been almost twenty and she still hasn’t shown up, so it makes sense for Jungeun to worry. 

Jungeun slings her backpack over her shoulder and sighs, walking down the halls and up the stairs to one of the seniors’ two classrooms. She listens to the sound of her steps resounding, louder than her worried thoughts. Jiwoo mentioned something about confessing to a senior earlier this morning. Jungeun hopes it went well and that Jiwoo forgot to mention plans of a date, but somehow she doubts it. She doesn’t know why she has such a bad feeling in the pit of her belly when she knocks on the door. 

No one answers, so after a beat of worrying whether or not she’ll see something she would rather not, she opens the door and walks in anyway.

Something about seeing people cry makes Jungeun want to punch something. Double if it’s Jiwoo who’s crying. Right now, Jungeun wishes she had a sandbag to hang so she could hit it with an upper right cross.

Jiwoo’s sitting on the floor, hard and dirty as it is, sniffing loudly. She doesn’t notice Jungeun in the doorway till Jungeun drops her backpack on the tile and rushes to her side.

“Hey, Jungeun,” Jiwoo manages, but keeps her head bowed. Maybe that’s for the better, because Jungeun doesn’t want to see her teary eyes.

Jungeun kneels down next to her. Her joints might hate her later, but she thinks she’d hate herself more if she wasn’t here for Jiwoo at a moment like this. “Hey,” she says softly, placing a hand on Jiwoo’s knee. Waits for silence to settle into the air before starting slowly, “So the confession?”

“Didn’t—didn’t go well.” Jiwoo glances at her for the briefest of moments, but even that’s enough for Jungeun to make out all the redness in her eyes. Jiwoo quickly looks away. “She likes—someone else.” 

Jungeun bites her tongue and pats Jiwoo’s knee, once, twice. “Mm.” She nods, as if she understands how much it hurts. As if she knows all the ways Jiwoo loved this senior. She doesn’t know, really. She doesn’t even know how to comfort her.

“I really liked her,” Jiwoo says, sounding a little strangled, like her feelings have caught her by the throat and refuse to let go. Her eyes are full of tears, not small tears like the ones from a scraped knee or a bad grade, but tears that well up in her eyes and drip down her cheeks, falling from her chin. She tilts her head back like that will make them stop, but they only flow more. “I really liked her.”

Jungeun’s mouth won’t form the words she needs. All she comes up with is, “I’m sorry,” and the sentence in itself is sorry. She grits her teeth and swallows all the superfluous condolences. Jiwoo doesn’t need that.

Jiwoo manages this sad little giggle that sounds more like a sob than anything else. “What are you sorry for?” She hiccups, wiping the tears away. She looks up, and Jungeun can finally see her face properly. Her painstakingly-applied makeup is ruined now, eyeshadow and blush smudging on her cheeks and the palms of her hands. Her eyes are red, no more glitter in them. For a moment Jungeun hates the senior that broke her heart like this, that killed all the stars from earlier this morning. 

Jungeun pauses, takes a breath. Takes Jiwoo’s hands, smudged and wet though they are. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, a lump forming in her own throat. She doesn’t know what for. She hates seeing stars go dim. 

Jiwoo makes another noise, muffled, very stuffed. “Thanks,” she says, voice thick. She squeezes Jungeun’s hands. “Thanks.”

Jungeun pulls her in and holds her close. She’s not touchy, but Jiwoo needs this, needs to know how much Jungeun cares. Jiwoo wraps her own arms around Jungeun’s waist like it’s second nature. She buries her face in Jungeun’s shoulder and squeezes tight. She smells good, like the fruity scents in the soap aisle. 

She murmurs something else into Jungeun’s shoulder. It feels like another “thank you,” and Jungeun wants to tell her that she doesn’t deserve thanks for repaying Jiwoo’s friendship, loyalty, and love, but she can’t seem to say anything at all. She rests her head on Jiwoo’s, closing her eyes. 

This isn’t the moment Jungeun falls in love. This is the moment when Jungeun realizes, Jiwoo’s hands in hers, that she’s in love at all. Jiwoo has had her heart and everything in it for years. “You’re welcome,” she whispers after a moment, and squeezes back.

 

“Jungeun, have you ever kissed anyone?” Jiwoo sits up in her sleeping bag, unzipping the side just enough for her to look less like a chrysalis and more like a human being. She rests her palms on the heart-shaped carpet and props herself up, blinking away her meager two hours of sleep. She looks a mess, but her eyes are wide.

Jungeun bristles, both from being awakened and from the question, and tries not to show it. “Maybe.” She thinks of rolling over and pretending to go back to sleep, but instead she sits up, after a few failed attempts. Her abs hurt from laughing at all of Jiwoo’s jokes. She tries for a frown but it comes out more like a pout. “Why?”

Jungeun likes to fancy herself something of a mystery to most people, opaque. But for Jiwoo, there’s nothing to be solved. She can see through it all. “Me neither,” she confesses, humming a tune she probably made herself. Jungeun should be offended, but she isn’t. It has something to do with how tenderly the colors of Jiwoo’s fairy lights touch the wisps of her tousled hair.

Blame the lack of sleep. She can’t see where this is leading, not till Jiwoo looks at her expectantly, tilting her head. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, and the movement sets something off like a bomb in Jungeun’s heart. “Do you—” she starts. 

“—I want to try it. With you,” Jiwoo says, a little shy, yet she’s still leaning toward Jungeun, lips parted. Jungeun knows her lips are soft, since she’s always applying that peach lip balm to them. Jungeun knows everything about her, almost. 

Jungeun knows they both like girls. That’s not the issue here. The issue is that Jiwoo, who’s bright, cute, whom she loves—Jiwoo wants to kiss her. And she wants to kiss Jiwoo more than anything. Maybe that’s the issue. 

“Fine.” She scoots closer, unzipping her sleeping bag so her arms are free. She doesn’t know how this works, but she suspects it goes similarly to everything else in life: fake it and hope everything works out okay. She angles her head to the right since Jiwoo’s tilting to the left, and tries not to move in too fast, afraid of startling her. 

Jiwoo’s already got her eyes closed. This close, Jungeun can see all the tiny freckles dotting her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. She smells like something sweet, soothing. Jungeun places a hand to Jiwoo’s jaw because she’ll be trembling otherwise, and shuts her own eyes, praying their noses won’t bump and that nothing like the stuff in cliché teen dramas happens. She leans in.

As expected, Jiwoo’s lips are soft, but they’re even softer than Jungeun thought they’d be. The taste of strawberries, not peaches, lingers on her lips even when they pull apart.

Her cheeks are flaming, heartbeat drumming on the inside of her chest. “There,” she mutters. “Happy now?”

Jiwoo nods, leans in to kiss her again. Jungeun closes her eyes and accepts her fate. Maybe she kisses back. Jiwoo hums against her lips, then against her throat. “I’m very happy.”

“Good.” Jungeun’s not sure where it comes from. Probably from somewhere in the center of her chest, where all the truth flows out. She runs her thumb along the curve of Jiwoo’s cheek. “I need you to be happy.” And isn't that the truth? She’s bad at saying it, but the softness of Jiwoo brings out the softness in her own self. 

Jiwoo hums again. “I'm happy with you.” She looks up at Jungeun. “I like you, Jungeun.”

Jungeun wasn't expecting this. She wasn’t expecting Jiwoo’s hands in her hair, or Jiwoo’s body so close she doesn’t know where her heartbeat ends and where Jiwoo’s begins. She wasn’t expecting a kiss so soft and sweet. Maybe she wasn’t expecting Jiwoo. “I like you, too,” she says back. She’s in love, really, but she won’t say that now. She kisses Jiwoo’s forehead, and both her cheeks. Then her lips one last time. Jiwoo giggles. 

“Jungeun,” she says when Jungeun draws back with a burning face and fluttering heart, star fire in her stomach, “are we dating now?”

Jungeun can’t look her in the eyes, trying to keep her hands from shaking when she tucks a stray lock of hair behind Jiwoo’s ear. “Probably.”

Jiwoo laughs and lays back down. Jungeun follows suit, wrapping herself in her sleeping bag. “Good night,” Jiwoo says. Somehow they’re holding hands now, like they always do at sleepovers. 

“Good night.” When Jungeun closes her eyes, there are so many lights dancing behind them. All of them remind her of Jiwoo.

 

It’s one thing to know about graduation and another thing to experience it. A part of Jungeun wants to speed time up and get it over with and another wants to slow everything down to the last millisecond. All parts grow more restless the closer graduation day comes.

“Jiwoo, I’m literally this close to offing myself,” she says, holding her thumb and forefinger two millimeters apart. Jiwoo tilts her head and giggles quietly. Jungeun narrows her eyes. “I swear I’m gonna have permanent eye-bags once this is over.”

“Good thing I love you no matter your appearance,” Jiwoo jokes. She turns a page and Jungeun rests her chin on the table, flicking a pen and watching it roll. They have a few more weeks here and then they’ll be off to college—at least they’ll be in the same one. Jungeun’s pen rolls off the table, but she doesn’t bother picking it up. The plan is that they’ll be at the same college, Jiwoo majoring in educational studies and minoring in music while Jungeun goes for communications with a minor in dance. The plan is that not everything has to change.

Jungeun’s been thinking a lot about change. It’s probably the senioritis, but she thinks. They pass their tests as the weeks fly by, and before Jungeun knows it, they’re standing in the stuffy auditorium with all their other classmates, waiting for their names to be called. Jiwoo finds Jungeun’s hand and holds it tightly, not needing words to say I’m here. 

It feels like a dream. One moment they’re high school seniors and the next, they’re graduated, strolling out of the building with diplomas clutched in their hands. Jungeun’s knuckles are white when she looks at the paper in her hands. Kim Jungeun, graduated from high school. It’s over. That should be a good thing, but her body feels too heavy and yet too light.

She stares at the blue sky as they walk. “Why do things change?” She tries to keep the emotions in her eyes and not flowing out of them. So far, she’s succeeding, but if she thinks about the entire ceremony and how she’s on her own now, the success won’t last long. She doesn’t understand why this makes her so emotional, why the thought of leaving this high school makes her cry. She blinks and swallows through a tight throat. 

Jiwoo bumps into her side, linking their arms before Jungeun can try to avoid the motion. “ _C’est la vie_ ,” she says gently. “That’s life, Jungeun.”

“Shouldn’t have to be.” Yeah, it’s immature to say, but Jungeun’s a relatively immature person. At least she can admit it. The tears are coming now, dripping down her face. She roughly dabs at them with the corner of her sleeve, but then she remembers she won’t be wearing this uniform anymore, and that makes them come faster.

Jiwoo pats her on the shoulder, then presses a kiss to her cheek. “I love you.” Jiwoo makes it all seem so easy and kind, the way her tone goes low, how she leans against Jungeun’s side.

“I know,” Jungeun says through a voice sounding like it’s about to break, trying to will the tears to stop falling. “I love you, too.” She sniffs loudly, pathetically, and leans back for support of both the physical and emotional variety.

Jiwoo grabs onto Jungeun’s hand and holding it tight, like she’s worried Jungeun will fall off some imaginary cliff. She’s always so bright and warm, a star. “At least you’ll always have me, right?” 

Jungeun tries not to sob aloud as she looks at Jiwoo. She’s got this bright-ass grin plastered on her face, and that makes Jungeun crack a smile to herself even through the tears.

“Yeah,” Jungeun manages. She thinks of the sun, of the world’s rotation, of the stars in the sky. There are some constants in life, maybe. One of them is Jiwoo’s hand wrapped around hers. 

 

The door opens with a creak, letting a crack of light into their apartment room, and Jungeun rolls over in their queen-sized bed. “Close the door,” she says like Jiwoo doesn’t already know. Jiwoo does just that, shutting it gently. 

Jiwoo sighs. There’s a shuffle, and then the telltale thump of their clothes drawer being opened and jammed. They need to buy a new one. Jiwoo mutters a curse, pulling out her sleep-clothes. The sound of her searching in the darkness and changing makes a rustle, and their drawer thuds as she shoves it closed. Jungeun would tell her to turn on the lights, but Jiwoo never listens. 

She doesn’t usually come back this late, but then, the parents of the kids she babysits don’t usually come home so late, either. Jungeun opens her eyes blearily even though she can only make out shadows and silhouettes. Jiwoo must be in the bathroom, brushing up, because the water is running. 

Jungeun sits up, only to stare at the digital clock on the wall opposite their bed. It’s one in the morning. She lies back down, looking at the empty spot next to her. She aches for Jiwoo’s star-warmth. 

The bathroom door opens and Jiwoo makes her way to the bed, soft steps on the little carpet they laid on the hardwood floor. The bed sinks slightly when she sits down on it, when she makes her way next to Jungeun. “Sorry I took so long,” she says, crouching. Jungeun can feel her hand on her shoulder even through the duvet. 

Jungeun pats the space where Jiwoo should be lying. “It’s okay.” Her voice is tired and it cracks at the first syllable she utters. Jiwoo only giggles, settling into the spot Jungeun’s reserved for her, kissing her on the lips. She tastes like mint. Jungeun kisses her again.

“I’m glad we’re happy together,” Jiwoo says softly. She places a hand on Jungeun’s cheek, and Jungeun closes her eyes. Jiwoo feels like starlight turned solid, tender on her skin. 

“What brings this on?”

“The kids I watched today, I don’t think their parents like each other much.” She strokes her thumb along Jungeun’s cheekbone. “It’s sad.”

Jungeun opens her eyes to meet Jiwoo’s. “It is,” she agrees. “Poor kids.”

Silence settles between them. Jungeun reaches for Jiwoo, resting her hand on the center of her chest, feeling her every breath under the palm of her hand. Jungeun calls it the sleepiness getting hold of her brain, but being able to touch Jiwoo this easily fills her with a brightness. She searches for Jiwoo’s hand beneath the sheets and holds it, their fingers fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. 

Jiwoo inhales, and Jungeun stops breathing for a moment. Even in the darkness, Jiwoo seems to glow. 

“Jungeun,” she says softly, “Let me tell you here and now that I love you.” She could go on, but she doesn’t have to. Jiwoo talks more with her eyes than with her words, conveys more with her warm fingertips on Jungeun’s throat, pressed to a steady pulse, than with speech. 

“Don’t say that,” Jungeun mumbles, reading what’s left unsaid. She doesn’t need to look at the night sky outside if she just stares into Jiwoo’s eyes. “I’ll have to marry you.”

“Why don’t you?” Jiwoo smiles, pressing a fingertip to Jungeun’s lips, and Jungeun pulls her in, kisses her.

She savors how Jiwoo giggles into her mouth, how Jiwoo’s hands settle so easily into her hair, her touch gentle. “I just might.” 

Jiwoo laughs again and says again, “I love you,” and Jungeun wonders how she wound up like this. Loving and in love. Her eyes are heavy but that’s okay. There’s nothing she’d rather fall asleep staring at than Jiwoo.

“I love you, too.” She presses her lips to Jiwoo’s and thinks of how countless the stars are, and how Jiwoo’s still the brightest one.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading and i really hope you enjoyed !! this is my first work in the loona tag but there will definitely be more bc i love loona and would give Both of my kidneys for them all
> 
> catch me [here](https://twitter.com/bitterins) (writing twt) or [here](https://twitter.com/lesbianseoyoung) (main twt.. i'm way more fun here)
> 
> all feedback is appreciated! stan loona and chuulip !! ♡


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